How Close Are Universities Socially, Institutionally and Cognitively? An Analysis Through TUBITAK Project Collaborations

Collaboration in science has been around for a long time. Policy designers who aim to foster scientific collaboration across a wide range of fields should take into account proximity factors. In this context, the aim of the study is to examine the relations between scientific collaborations between universities and social, institutional and cognitive proximity dimensions together, using the perspective of proximity. In this way, it is aimed to contribute to the literature by analyzing the relationship between proximity and economic networks. The scope of the study consists of 2323 TUBITAK 1001 projects completed, accepted and successful by 193 universities between 2012 and 2020. The analysis method is a gravity model similar to Newton's universal gravitational law. Analyzes were carried out in the R program. Based on TUBITAK 1001 project data, it is possible to summarize the findings regarding the relationship between closeness and cooperation as follows: The more projects carried out by universities, the higher their tendency to cooperate later. The fact that institutional proximity has a positive and significant coefficient indicates that the same type of institutions are more prone to cooperation. Looking at social proximity, it seems to have a significant and positive effect on scientific cooperation. Universities that have cooperated in the past are more likely to cooperate in the future. Finally, similarities in the scientific fields of researchers in the projects carried out have no effect on scientific cooperation. This means that the same scientific expertise is not important for promoting inter-university collaborations.